The Façade is Crumbling
That’s the impression given by some in the media as they react to a bevy of new books that seek to debunk Dan Brown’s hugely successful novel (seven million copies sold and 57 weeks on or near the top of The New York Times bestseller list). Several Protestant books have been published already, led by Dr. Darrell Bock¹s Breaking The Da Vinci Code (Thomas Nelson). On the Catholic front, Amy Welborn’s De-Coding Da Vinci (Our Sunday Visitor) and Steve Kellmeyer’s Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code have recently hit the streets. I’m hardly impartial to the topic as I have co-authored, with historian and journalist Sandra Miesel, the most thorough refutation of Brown’s novel (375 pages and over 500 footnotes). It is titled The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius, June 2004) and has been described by Francis Cardinal George as “the definitive debunking.”
Shameless plug aside, some of the cultural elites are already thumbing their noses at these books. But before looking at some of those criticisms, it’s worth remembering how overwhelmingly positive, even laudatory, were the Brown-nosing reviews of The Da Vinci Code in major newspapers and other media outlets when the novel appeared last spring. Brown’s thriller was described as a “masterpiece [that] should be mandatory reading” (Library Journal), “ingenious” (Salon.com), “Intellectually satisfying” (Houston Chronicle), “an exhilaratingly brainy thriller” (New York Times), and a work “transmitting several doctorates’ worth of fascinating history and learned speculation” (Chicago Tribune). Of course, a huge number of readers agree, and online reviews have described the novel in equally glowing, even obsessive, terms. Part and parcel with this praise has been the assertion that the claims made in the novel, although coming from fictional characters, are factual, well researched, and reliable.
However, The Da Vinci Code’s façade of historical veracity and scholarly underpinnings has been crumbling as articles and books have shown that perhaps the best secret of the novel is how little of it stands up to scrutiny. As nearly every jot and tittle of Brown’s masterwork has been exposed as clumsily derivative, patently false, or both, supporters of the novel have turned to various methods of salvaging face. Favorite tactics include name-calling, condescension, and blowing smoke. This is hardly surprising, I suppose, since such actions are common for bullies, which are exactly what many cultural elites are.
They Think We Should Roll Over and Play Dead
Some of this is subtle, but apparent enough on closer examination. In an article titled “Furor Over Popular Religion Novels” (CBS.com. April 15, 2004), Dr. Bock’s book is described as “the first of several Protestant attack books.” Can anyone imagine a major, secular newspaper describing The Da Vinci Code as “an attack novel,” even though it does blatantly attack the Catholic Church and portray Catholicism as a bloody, woman-hating, violence-inducing farce? Readers are also told that “Roman Catholics will soon pile on with The Da Vinci Hoax,” as though poor Dan Brown were being picked on by a band of savages. More pointed is a recent article from the British newspaper The Telegraph, bearing the revealing title, “America's Christians launch assault on The Da Vinci Code” (Julian Coman. May 2, 2004.). The opening paragraph states:
The staggering success of The Da Vinci Code, the quasi-historical thriller which claims that Jesus was a mere mortal and Christianity a sexist conspiracy to exclude women from positions of power, has spread panic among the clergy who fear that people will literally take what they read as Gospel.
Panic? Really? Irritation, frustration, and anger — yes. Panic, no. But the point, it seems, is that Christians who are responding to The Da Vinci Code are small, fearful people clutching to the vapors of dogma in a golden age of reason. The article goes on to make this curious statement: “Fighting back, Christian pastors, priests and theologians across America are releasing a series of books to debunk the central claims of The Da Vinci Code.” I’d sure like to meet the priests who are writing these books, but doubt that will happen since, as far as I know, they don’t exist. As Mark Shea notes on his weblog: “When you get to the article, what you find is that the actual people doing this work (particularly in the most hierarchical expression of Christianity) are informed and passionate laypeople who are not ‘panicked’ but simply [angry] that a quack and charlatan like Brown has snookered so many people.”
Exactly right. To put it into context, can you imagine a novel being published that claimed the Holocaust was a myth fabricated by a cadre of rich, powerful Jews in order to create worldwide sympathy for the Jewish people? Or how about a best-seller based on the premise that Mohammed was a frustrated, bitter homosexual who created Islam, waged war, and had multiple wives in order to assert his manhood? And what if these novels claimed to be factual, based on secret information and recently-discovered texts? And what if the author publicly stated that it was completely true? Can anyone imagine that such books would be described as “masterpieces” that are “intellectually satisfying”?
If Authority Answers, Will They Listen?
Recently I appeared on CNBC’s “The Capital Report” to discuss the possible impact of the upcoming cinematic version of The Da Vinci Code (due out in 2005), which will be directed by Ron Howard and will reportedly star Russell Crowe. My opponent was Richard Walters, head of the UCLA screenwriting program.
Asked of my concerns about the novel and forthcoming movie, I stated: “One of the problems is that so many readers of the novel are taking it as gospel truth when it comes to historical events and people, and are approaching as though it is somehow factually based.” This is, of course, the primary concern of those of us who have written articles and books critiquing The Da Vinci Code. I went on to provide some examples, including the novel’s nonsensical claim that nobody, not even Jesus’ followers, believed that Jesus was divine until Emperor Constantine named Jesus as “Son of God” at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.
Walters responded in a clearly condescending tone: “If you go to the bookstore and look for The Da Vinci Code, go to the fiction section. It’s pretend! It’s all made up; it says it right from the get go.” He was correct about it being a novel — a fact that I’ve never lost sight of, having read The Da Vinci Code more than once — but completely wrong about Brown saying that’s “it’s all made up.” Actually, if Walters had glanced through the The Da Vinci Code, he would see that it opens with a “FACT” page, which declares that the Priory of Sion is “ a real organization” founded in 1099 and that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, document, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” Those are very dubious statements considering that the Priory of Sion was founded in the 1950s and the author misstates the size of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings by a full eighteen inches (in fact, Brown gets almost nothing correct about the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci).
But Walters went even further. “It just strikes me how frail the faith is, of people, in Jesus, who worry about this,” he snidely commented. “Don’t they think that Christianity can stand up to some book or some movie?” It’s a strange remark since the only way we can know that Christianity can “stand up” to The Da Vinci Code is to compare Brown’s claims to the facts. Yet Walters obviously thinks that appealing to facts and scholarship is a sign of weak faith. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He summarized his eloquent argument by exclaiming: “Talk about a tempest in a tea pot!”
I then asked why it was that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was loudly and continually attacked for being allegedly historically inaccurate and anti-Semitic, while The Da Vinci Code, which is bursting with howlers and anti-Catholic diatribes, is ignored by the same critics. Having condescended and having implied that authors of the various rebuttals are weak and insecure, Walters responded by blowing smoke. After grudgingly saying that Gibson had “every right” to make The Passion he stated:
History is High-Story…. Beware of anybody who claims to know the Truth with a capital ‘T’! It’s not about finding answers, but about asking more provocative questions, and what film does best, what art does best, what literature does best, is not to make us comfortable and satisfied, but to provoke us, to disturb us, into thinking for ourselves, and to that extent The Da Vinci Code, and the film of The Da Vinci Code, will be great contributions.
The insistence on “thinking for ourselves” is ironic considering that Walters’ remark is just one big, relativistic cliché. But it also begs an important question: Is The Da Vinci Code “just a novel” or is it great art that provokes, disturbs, and makes us think? This hoarding of the proverbial cake and eating it too is worse than annoying — it is disingenuous. And does Walters think his statement here is true? If so, it is True or “true”? And what about Dan Brown claiming that his novel’s claims are true? Why does Walters give Brown the benefit of the doubt, but mock Christian responses?
There are a number of interrelated answers, but there can be no doubt that the anti-Christian, relativistic message of The Da Vinci Code resonates with all sorts of cultural elites. Their motto is best summarized by the bumper sticker: “Question Authority!” That goes double for religious authority, and triple for the Catholic Church. As for the authority by which they exhort others to question authority, don’t bother to ask. The one thing a bully hates and fears the most is a factual punch to his baseless chops.
Carl E. Olson (www.carl-olson.com) is co-author, with Sandra Miesel, of The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code (www.davincihoax.com).
His book critiquing the Left Behind phenomenon and premillennial dispensationalism, titled Will Catholics Be Left Behind? A Catholic Critique of the Rapture and Today's Prophecy Preachers was selected by the Associated Press as one of the best religious titles of 2003 and is now available from our online store.
